Turn on your tv and switch off your mind as you binge watch

It is amazing how much our attitude to watching TV has changed over the past half a century.

Then again think of the way entertainment changed between 1875 and 1925.

By 1875 Music Hall was the big thing. The working classes flocked to see and hear variety acts ranging from Little Tich to Marie Lloyd.

At the same time the middle classes could rent boxes to get a good view of the entertainment and see the workers making the most of the few leisure hours they had.

Music Hall continued to grow to the end of the century and from the Victorian era into the Edwardian era.

Then came the First World War and a great chunk of the audience were shipped to Europe to fight and die in the “war to end all wars”.

By the time the war ended and the boys came home Music Hall was already waning and in the next few years entertainment had changed.

By 1920 Marconi was making informal broadcasts from Chelmsford and the British Broadcasting Company was in full swing by the early 1920s.

At the same time there was a new form of entertainment with the rise of jazz and the introduction of big bands and the arrival of swing and instead of flocking to the music halls the populace were heading to the music halls.

In 1975 we had just three television channels in the UK: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.

In most homes you had to watch the TV programme when it was broadcast. Video tape recorders were available but price wise they were way out of range of most television viewers.

If you started watching a TV drama serial then you were committing yourself to being at home at a set time every week for anything from six weeks up to three months.

You could not record it and it would not normally be repeated.

If you started another series you were committing yourself to be at home another evening per week.

Over the three channels you could commit yourself to being home at least five days a week or more.

Surprisingly people could keep track of the plots of four, five or even six TV programmes every week.

Nowadays we can record any programme we want and watch it whenever we want.

You don’t even need to record them.

Nowadays you can go to BBCiplayer, ITVX or any of the other channels and watch programmes shown weeks, months or even years earlier.

Some series are available in full on these channels as soon as the first one has been broadcast.

This means you could watch a short series over two nights, even in a single night if you wanted to.

This means you don’t have to remember a plot for six weeks or more and nowadays people sometimes fail to keep up with a plot when the series was not available to binge watch until the series broadcast had finished.

At least when the music halls gave way to dance halls people were still going out to be entertained.

Beginning a brand-new adventure still going strong half a century later

We all have those times when we make a decision and then suddenly realise we have made a commitment which requires a great number of actions in a very limited time.

The first time Marion and I faced such a situation was in the first half of 1977.

I had been offered a reporter’s job with my old company, North Wales Newspapers, based on Anglesey.

We had to find a place to live, almost certainly a rental, in North Wales; Marion had to put the Basildon house on the market; furniture would need to be stored; we would have to decide what we needed with us and what could be stored with the furniture.

All this as well as working out my notice with Rank; doing all the things we had to do in the normal world.

It was Spring but we didn’t know how long it would be before we would find our own place and have all our things with us: all of the girls’ toys and clothes; dining table and chairs; three-piece suite; my records; and on and on and on . . .

Then, suddenly, it happened. We looked back at the house in The Upway, said goodbye, then we were facing a bungalow in Valley and behind us was the narrow strip of water separating Anglesey from Holy Island . . . separating Valley, with its RAF base, from Holyhead, with its ferry terminal linking North Wales with Ireland.

For me it was starting on a new venture; for Marion it was far greater.

She had moved to Basildon with her family in the mid-50s, about the same time we moved to Rhyl; she had moved with her parents just once, but only a few streets away; then one final move to The Upway until that day when I took her from her Essex and whisked her and the girls off to a different country, with a different language and different customs.

There we started a brand new adventure almost 50 years ago, and we are still enjoying it.

Friendship’s Mystery, To My Dearest Lucasia

by Katherine Phillips

Come, my Lucasia, since we see
That Miracles Men's Faith do move,
By wonder and by prodigy
To the dull angry world let's prove
There's a Religion in our Love.

For though we were design'd t'agree,
That Fate no liberty destroyes,
But our Election is as free
As Angels, who with greedy choice
Are yet determined to their jokes.

Our hearts are doubled by the loss,
Here Mixture is Addition grown;
We both diffuse, and both ingross:
And we whose minds are so much one,
Never, yet ever are alone.

We court our own Captivity
Than Thrones more great and innocent
'twere banishment to be set free,
Since we wear fetters whose intent
Not Bondage is, but Ornament.

Divided joyes are tedious found,
And griefs united easier grow:
We are our selves but by rebound,
And all our Titles shuffled so,
Both Princes, and both Subjects too.

Our Hearts are mutual Victims laid,
While they (such power in Friendship lies)
Are Altars, Priests and Off'rings laid:
And each Heart, which thus kindly dies,
Grows deathless by the Sacrifice.


Time to stop passing the buck as the NHS slowly sinks

There is a lot of talk these days about pharmacies (what most people call the chemist shop) being more involved in the overall aspect of health, including giving advice and even becoming a first step when you feel unwell.

This doesn’t mean the local chemist can give you a full medical examination and then prescribe the best drugs for what bothers you.

We all know the National Health Service, created following the Second World War by Labour Secretary for Health Nye Bevan, as part of the post-war government of Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee, has been facing problems for the past 30 or 40 years.

Yet the solution recent governments have come up with is to basically go back to the days of mid 20th century pharmacists.

My father was a pharmacist and served with the RAMC during the Second World War. He signed up in September 1939, breaking into his studies at the Liverpool College of Pharmacy, and when he was demobbed in 1945 he was a sergeant pharmacist.

He returned to his studies and was very soon a qualified pharmacist.

Initially he began working life as a manager in Liverpool, Much Wenlock and then Chesham but he wanted to be his own man.

In the mid 50s a business became available in Rhyl, in North Wales and with a bit of help from my mother’s aunt, Florence affectionately known as Auntie Flo, and her husband, my grandfather’s cousin and brother-in-law and fellow soldier in the Liverpool Pals in WW1, my father became D G Pierce, MPS, at 14 Water Street, Rhyl, in North Wales.

The business and property had come up for sale after the death of the former pharmacist and owner Mr C Dixon.

It had clearly been a good business and Mr Dixon had been a much-loved member of the community. Locals soon became aware that my father was just as hard-working and helpful as his predecessor.

The property included our living quarters accessed from a large porch to the left of the shop.

The shop was open during normal trading hours but even after 6pm customers knew that they could ring the doorbell and have urgent prescriptions made up on the spot.

This was in the days when doctors made home visits even at night.

If a doctor gave a home patient a prescription and marked it “urgent” they would often be directed to Dad’s premises to have the script made up.

The point is he would also give advice if someone came in with minor complaints and would make up a mixture we all called Dad’s Jollop which helped with many things from heartburn to an upset stomach.

In all cases, however, his final advice was always: “See your doctor as soon as you can.”

This is how things were in the mid-50s, yet now politicians are looking at the situation in a broken NHS and the answer, apparently, is to get pharmacists to take on work normally done by doctors.

The point is I believe most pharmacists can take on a number of these tasks which would help GP practices freeing doctors up to do other work.

The problem is most of these pharmacists are already stretched to the limit supervising the making up of prescriptions and the general supervision of a busy pharmacy.

It is time the government put more money into the National Health Service to improve the efficency.

A year of delight at home again in my beloved country

I left you all dangling in the first half of last year after I quit the glamorous (on the surface) life of a London cinema manager and moved our little family from the South East of England to the North West of Wales.

I was back not only in Wales but in the job I was born for – a journalist.

Just a brief summary of what preceded this change.

A mere four weeks before I had been in my office at the Odeon, Camden Town.

Two days beforehand I had been assaulted in the foyer of the cinema I managed.

That weekend Marion and I had a long talk and the following Monday I had called one of the directors of North Wales Newspapers and within 24 hours he had come back to me with the offer of a job as a district reporter for the North Wales Chronicle in Holyhead, which is on the island that marks the “nose” of Anglesey.

Basically I was about to start work on an island which was off another island off the coast of God’s own country.

During our tenure in Holyhead I experienced three major events which marked the beginning of my return to the job I was born to.

One was the fact that for the first time Marion and I bought our first house together.

Two was my first ever meeting with a major international film star.

Three, my darling Marion and I got married.

Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee proved to be quite a momentous year for us.

To be continued.

The longest loaf of my life but only in the proving

For the first time ever I have managed to produce an edible loaf of bread despite having to let it rise for almost 24 hours.

As I mentioned yesterday I had not baked my own bread for months because major crises had driven out normal life for over three years.

I made the bread yesterday and left it in the corner of the kitchen where there is generally plenty of warmth.

An hour later the dough showed no signs of rising to the occasion.

Further two hours and no noticeable rise.

This carried on throughout the afternoon and evening.

By the time we went to bed, 11pm, it was showing vague signs of smoothing out on top and sat higher in the proving basket, this was over 12 hours since it had gone in the basket.

By 9am the following morning, almost 24 hours after I had finished kneading the dough, I put it in the loaf tin and popped it in the oven and 40 minutes later I had a loaf.

Not the most beautiful I had made but still looking reasonable.

Once it had cooled I cut a couple of slices for my lunch.

It was denser than normal but still edible.

I have had trouble before after a break from baking but this was the first that had been left to prove for so long.

It will get better but in the meantime I am reasonably happy after the first loaf of the year.

My jokes aren’t enough to get a rise out of my bread dough.

Well we got through Day One without any major mishaps and I actually managed to get something done.

Not a lot.

The first thing I did was to make some jellies, which I should have done three days ago.

Up a few pegs from that I did make my first batch of bread dough. Not only was it the first for this year, it was also the first since near the end of September.

That September is a very important time, etched indelibly on my mind, but more about that at a later date.

The dough mixed7 well but I must admit it felt somewhat heavier than usual when I was kneading it.

I have been keeping a careful eye on it all day and it has not done as well as those I did in the summer.

Now, many of the loaves I made earlier in 2024 also managed to rise well, but this one has been a great disappointment to me.

I decided to leave it overnight so will let you know later how it went

I doubt I’ll miss 2024 and 2025 can’t be worse

Happy New Year one and all.

Just a couple of days into the second half of 2024 I was bemoaning the fact that I was finally beginning to feel old.

I was also putting the first half of the year down at about third on my list of: “the worst six months of my life.”

Well let me tell you, it was already lying at third and the last six months shoved it down a place and at the moment I am not sure as to whether or not it will head even lower in the next couple of years.

As we are only just entering the year 2025 I will save my report on the last few months until later in the week rather than upset my readers so early in 2025.

What I do know is that I am intending to try and make the most of every single day of this sparkingly shiny year and catch up on some of the jobs that have been allowed to accumulate over the past six months.

It will involve a lot of work in the garden: weeding; relaying gravel; sorting out the front garden (destined to be a cottagey wildflower area); putting up arches and arbours in the rear garden to create a framework for climbing plants and areas to sit and enjoy the summer sunshine; bringing in new fruit trees; and just generally creating a paradise without having to work too hard.

I hope you all enjoy the year ahead.

Time is mine and that tricky thief of time will not steal it

I am going in to the New Year with so many things lying ahead of me. Not just jobs but things I want to do for myself.

These “tasks” or “jobs” cover a wide range from tidying the garden to reading books; from tiling the kitchen walls to doing jigsaws; from redecorating the living room to tracing my ancestors.

The point is none of these will be New Year resolutions because once you “resolve” to do something you tend to find a myriad of other things that will need to be done sooner.

Over the past few months I have been getting up in the mornings and deciding to do this, that, or the other. Yet after our morning cups of tea, getting dressed, having our breakfast it suddenly seemed there was not enough time to do what I intended to do and I end up doing something other than what I had intended to do.

Procrastination is the thief of time, or so we are led to believe, but is it true? Is it not ourselves who decide what we should do or not do?

We can not steal time because time is constant, we might waste time by carrying out an unnecessary action but the time was still there no matter what we did with it.

This year I will read (I have received plenty of books from Brontë to Tolkien; Shelley to Stevenson; Dumas to Melville); I will bake (bread, biscuits and cakes); I will decorate and I will garden.

The point is I will do it in my time and when I want to do it, not to a strict timetable.

I hope you all have a good time in 2025.

Let’s start at the very beginning

Which, as Julie Andrews told us all, is a very good place to start.

We might spend a lot of time with our ABC, but, in consideration of my followers, there will be no tonic solfa.

This is the start of a brand new year, the first day of the first month of the 25th year of the 21st century CE, or AD if you like the idea of a God sending his son down to sort out all the problems of the world.

I know many of you will be coming down from the highs of all the celebrations which are traditional at this festive time, so I’ll play it down a bit while we get to know each other all over again.

I’ve been away for around six months but in my defence I would say those months have been very overcast, especially the last three months.

We have come out the other side and are ready to face what we hope will be a wonderful year.

Before all that, however, let me wish you A HAPPY NEW YEAR, or, as they say in my beloved Cymru:

BLWYDDYN NEWYDD DDA